School

School was the most amazing experience yet!
6.20 wake up aside, the ride to school with ever single person string at the foreigner on the bike, the assembly, meeting our class and playing basketball with all the kids at school was AMAZING! And ofcourse meeting my second parents after school and our late night shao kao with the foreign english teacher was a great way to finish an amazing day!

Ok, so firstly we spent the morning at the foreign office where we drank nescafe (!!!!!) andtalked about admin stuff etc and then we met 4 english teachers from England all from 21 to 2! There's just something about meeting foreigners that speak your language going through the same intense culture shock as you in the middle of China in the same school about to go through the same adventure as you that just demands instant friends for life! We each talked about our adventures so far, the rabbits head the rat in the toilet, one of the teachers talked about trying to ask for tampons in the supermarket and being taken to instant noodles (apparently the word is the same with different tones!). Then it was time for assembly, unbeknown to us we were a main feature of this assemby! We were taken to the front, by the foot of the stage and we watched the headmaster speaking to over 2000 students all lined up in their classes of 50 - 65 in complete astonishment at the sheer amount of people in one place! Then we were called up onto the stage! We were each introduced name and country, and then the most amazing thing happened, they presented each one of us with a massive bouquet of beautiful flowers as a wellcome to the college. It was incredible :) It must be such a big thing for a chinese school to have foreign students, but I have also realised that part of the exchange in china deal is teaching english, but hey they're wellcoming us into their country and we're going to improve incredibly with chinese either way to that's totally fair!

After the assembly we went to our class! Me and Philip, an American who attracts a special amount of attention from the Chinese students with his orange hair are both in the same class which is such a relief! We both sturggled through each lesson with our chinese english dictionaries and wobbly chairs absolutely oblivious as to what is actually going on, until I actually understood something in Chemistry of all subjects! (we had already missed english and maths in the morning so our only chances of knowing what was going on were long gone!)
Our class mates were so excited to have the foreigners in their class! And they were all so friendly! After it was communicated that I play basketball the invitations to play basketball at lunch flooded in, and over here it's the norm to go out to dinner with your friends after school because they have their evening study classes from 7 - 9 so the invitations for dinner also came flooding in and it was such a wellcoming amazing experience!

People over here love the blue eyes too, me and Philip with the blue eyes and orange hair create quite a spectacle when we walk through school! It's really cute! We don't have to walk between classes though, the teachers come to us! It's fantastic, except sitting in the same place from 7.30 - 12 can be a tad tedious, but we can get up and walk around for 10 minutes between classes! The schooling is crazy though! period 1 - 5 from 7.10 - 12 and then lunch for 2 hours (lunch and a nannas nap!) and then from 2 - 5.35 we have periods 6-9 and then me and Philip finish early (finish EARLY!) and can go home! Since I'm way way waaay to petrified to bike home by myself I go to our 2nd parents basically who live about 5 minutes from school and... brace yourselves for this people... They speak absolutely no english and... I TOTALLY HAD A CONVERSATION WITH THEM IN CHINESE WHERE THERE WAS MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING!! It was actually in the top ten achievements on my life! It was incredible!! Ok so I admit they had to talk a little slow, and I had to ask them to repeat what they said a few times, and there was lots of body language involved but the dictionary was not involved and we totally talked about new zealand and my house and food and my parents and their jobs and what I'm doing next year and how cute the grandson is.... It was AWESOME! So pretty muh a breakthrough and a half, making that first day at school even more awesome!

When my host sister came by after her night classes finally finished we went out for shao kao (chinese bbq kebabs) at our 2nd dads request and there we met one of the english teachers tom!
And before we knew it, the Chinese beer was brought out and the gan-beiing began! And we had a full on celebration on our hands! Chinese people love to treat their guests, they are incredibly kind and generous especially our 2nd dad, he is actually one of my favourite people! He says he likes making friends and making people happy and having fun and I was like you have it sorted! So we toasted to being in China, ate kebabs and I managed to translate between the english teacher and our 2nd Dad! Which was anothe accomplishment and a half! Being the translator not the one who needed the translating!!!!!!!!!

After that we rode home and eventually got into bed, and managed about 5 hours sleep before the next 6.20 wake up.... Which was not easy! I promised myself the next night was going to be a lot earlier! But as it came, I was walking into the bathroom to take a shower and the Dad comes homee and I hear a wait! And then all of a sudden we are going out again to meet friend, eat and drink so pretty much the lifestyle over here minus the lack of sleep on weekdays is something I can really get used to! On friday night we slept for about 16 hours :) Completely missed breakfast on Saturday but got up just in time for lunch!

So pretty much life is amazing and incredible and each day brings entirely new things and as much as I miss home and love New Zealand incredible amounts, this experience is amazing and I can't wait to see what the next 4 and a half months have in store!